Advances in plasma processing have provided for growth in the semiconductor industry. In order for manufacturing companies to stay competitive in the semiconductor industry, it is important for them to maintain the plasma processing system in good working condition. However, the task of up-keeping the plasma processing system have become challenging given the multiple parts involved.
A plasma processing system may be composed of many components. For ease of discussion, the term “component” will be used to refer to an atomic or a multi-part assembly in a plasma processing system. Thus, a component may be as simple as a gas line or may be as complex as the entire process module. A multi-part component (such as a process module) may be formed from other multi-part components (such as a vacuum system, a gas system, a power supply system, etc), which may in turn be formed from other multi-part or atomic components.
Since the plasma processing system may typically be comprised of many components, the seemingly simple task of keeping track of all the different components may have to be performed manually. However, manually tracking all the various components associated with the plasma processing system tends to be an extremely tedious process that may be prone to human error. Generally, a manufacturer may have a plurality of spreadsheets on which data about the components may be kept. In some situation, the spreadsheets may be consolidated at a common database. However, the process of updating the spreadsheets and consolidating the data may demand precious time and man-power.
Consider the situation wherein, for example, a gas showerhead has just been installed in substrate processing system. The information may be manually gathered and entered onto a spreadsheet. Then at a later point in time, the information about the gas showerhead on the spreadsheet may be updated at a centralized database. As can be appreciated by those skilled in the arts, the manual method may be prone to human error. In an example, errors may be made during the process of copying the data onto a spreadsheet and then transferring to the centralized spreadsheet.
Since the process of recording the data onto a centralized database may take some time, the possibility of a worn component (e.g., the component is at the end of its useful life) being installed into another machine and causing dire consequences (e.g., high number of defective substrates, damage the machine, etc.) may occur. Consider the situation wherein, for example, a plasma cluster tool A requires a gas showerhead. Since the tool and the centralized database does not have the capability of interacting with one another, history about the gas showerhead may not be readily available. Thus, the technician may install a defective gas showerhead without being fully aware of the history of the gas showerhead, thereby resulting in undesirable consequences, such as damage to the machine and/or damage to the substrates being processed.
As previously discussed, several disadvantages exist in the prior art method of up-keeping and tracking components. For example, the method of manually collecting and consolidating data about the plasma processing system and its components is inefficient and ineffective since the manual method is generally dependent upon human's intervention. The inability to quickly acquire and share the data may result in unnecessary costly damage to components and tools. Further, manufacturers may experience high ownership cost as the lack of timely data makes maintenance scheduling a difficult process.